1894-] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 311 



DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



Edited by Prof. JOHN B. SMITH, Sc. D., New Brunswick, N, J. 



ntroduced Insects. The subject is not a new one, and has been venti" 

 lated in a number of publications and by various authors. It is the sub- 

 ject of an able editorial in "Garden and Forest," No. 350, under the 

 heading of "Quarantine against Plant Pests," in which the possibility 

 and desirability of such a quarantine are considered. The conclusion is: 

 "What the General Government can do, and what the State Govern- 

 ments can do, in the same direction, is to give liberal support to the sci- 

 entific study of contagious diseases of plants and of pestiferous insects, 

 and to Experimentation for insuring the most effective methods of eradi- 

 cating them." 



There is another thing that can be done, and this is to a large extent 

 in the hands of purchasers of nursery stock. They could insist on a 

 written guarantee with each lot of stock purchased, that they are clean 

 and free from insect pests and had not been, in the nursery, affected by 

 any plant disease, nor grown in the vicinity of diseased trees. The 

 agency of Nurseries in distributing plant diseases and insect pests is es- 

 tablished beyond all manner of doubt; though they are by no means the 

 exclusive agents. It is not an unusual occurrence for an orchard, newly 

 set out, to be handicapped from the very start by insidious foes that ex- 

 haust its juices and vitality: such as Scale insects, Psyllids, Plant-lice, 

 and even borers. Too often the foes are not noticed until the injury is 

 beyond the reach of remedial applications, and trees, time, and use of 

 land are all lost. No farmer should set out a tree until he has examined 

 it closely and made certain that no scale insects infest any portion of it. 

 He should also wash at least the trunk and larger branches with a kero- 

 sene emulsion, diluted by no more than five parts of water and he should, 

 finally, trim back to the smallest possible amount of wood, burning or 

 otherwise destroying all the cuttings. The latter practice is a good one 

 to facilitate the growing of the tree, because the disturbed and mutilated 

 roots will not then have an excessive task in supporting foliage. Its value 

 from the entomologist's standpoint is, that it disposes of the eggs of the 

 Aphids or plant-lice, which are so often found at the base of the leaf buds 

 on the smaller twigs. 



An insect introduced into New Jersey within a comparatively recent 

 period is the "flat headed pear borer," Agrilus sinuatus Oliv. I called 

 attention to this species at the recent meeting of the Association of Eco- 

 nomic Entomologists without recognizing it as a European form, and 

 when I believed it a case of local outbreak of a native species. Since 

 that time I have been led, by suggestions from Mr. E. A. Schwarz, made 

 through Mr. Howard, to study somewhat the literature of the European 

 species above named, and there remains no doubt that it is the same as 



